Schools budget 'safe' from cuts

The schools budget for England will be protected from sweeping cuts in next
week's spending review.

The conclusions came just hours after Mr Clegg launched the pupil premiumPhoto: PA

By Graeme Paton and Nick Collins

8:00AM BST 16 Oct 2010

Nick Clegg announced a £7 billion "pupil premium" for children from poorer backgrounds yesterday, intended to give poor children – typically those eligible for free school meals – access to the best nurseries, schools and universities.

It will pay for an additional 15 hours of free childcare for two-year-olds and give state schools some £2,000 more to educate children from low-income families. In addition, universities could be paid extra for awarding places to the most deprived teenagers.

The announcement was greeted with caution by school leaders, who feared the additional funding may be supplied by slashing other areas of the £35bn schools budget.

But ministers are set to confirm that schools in England will receive a small overall increase in finances when the spending review is announced next week.

At some schools the new premium will cancel out other cuts to secure a net increase in budgets, although schools with fewer disadvantaged children could see a decrease in overall funding.

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With pupil numbers set to rise by 80,000 by 2014, the proportional rise in funding per child is likely to be smaller than in previous years.

The rest of the Department for Education's budget will not be protected and is forecast to face severe cuts in the spending review.

Opponents of the pupil premium said that it would "widen inequalities" rather than achieve its stated aim of improving social mobility.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain's most respected economic think tank, said the proposals would be disproportionately pushed towards children in more affluent counties.

In the most extreme case, it is claimed that poor children in Wokingham, Berkshire, could receive up to two and a half times as much as deprived children in Tower Hamlets, east London.

The conclusions came just hours after Mr Clegg launched the policy with a speech in which he pledged to ensure children would no longer be born into a "life sentence of disadvantage."

But the IFS study – submitted as part of a Government consultation into the plans – said it "could increase school funding inequalities" because a specific grant would be paid on top of existing funding, which is weighted to favour the most deprived councils.

A higher premium would be paid in areas with lower overall funding, meaning it would effectively result in a "higher pupil premium in less deprived areas", the report said.